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Sam Corti had a sense of foreboding as she drove to hospital. For more than a year, the 40-year-old had been suffering increasingly painful and heavy periods and cramping pain in between. Although her GP had reassured her it was probably nothing more sinister than fibroids - benign growths in the womb - her instinct was that it was much more serious.

‘Jade Goody had just been diagnosed with cervical cancer and I’d had the same disease when I was 21,’ she recalls. ‘Unlike Jade, my cancer had been caught in the very early stages - it was picked up on a smear test - and treated successfully. Even though I’d had annual smear tests since, which were always clear, I had this horrible feeling the cancer had returned.’

Unfortunately, her instinct proved right. A scan and a further internal examination showed a grapefruit-sized tumour had wrapped itself round her bladder and bowel. The tumour was graded as a very aggressive 4a - with 1a being the least aggressive. Sam was also told they had found several inflamed lymph nodes in the groin area. Her chances of survival were 50:50.

Although Sam felt ‘completely helpless’, she says: ‘I thought there must be something positive I could do.’ She decided radically to alter her diet - and started to drink lots of green tea. Within just four weeks, her cancer had withdrawn from her bowel - to the astonishment of her surgeons.

She is now clear of cancer and, while radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment have been key, she is in no doubt that her green tea diet has been significant to her recovery.

Her doctors are more sceptical - and point out that tumours can spontaneously shrink for reasons we don’t know.